Consumption of steel products in Ukraine rose by 2.2% y/y in January–May

The share of imports in the domestic market rose to 46%, compared with 38% a year earlier

Between January and May 2026, Ukraine increased its consumption of steel products by 2.2% compared with the same period in 2025, reaching 1.6 million tonnes. This is according to data from the state-owned enterprise Ukrmetallurgprom.

Imports for the period amounted to 732,400 tonnes, or 46% of the domestic market. By way of comparison, in January–May 2025, the domestic market capacity stood at 1.55 million tonnes, of which 591,800 tonnes, or 38%, were accounted for by imports. Thus, despite a slight decline in overall consumption, the share of imports rose by 8 percentage points.

In the import structure, flat products continue to dominate over long products, accounting for 62.4% and 28.6% respectively, although in January–May last year this gap was significantly wider, standing at 76.8% versus 21.2%.

During the reporting period, Ukrainian steelmakers produced 2.34 million tonnes of rolled steel (-6.7% y/y), of which they exported around 1.48 million tonnes, or 63.2%.

Semi-finished products accounted for 41.2% of export shipments, which is significantly higher than the figure for the same period last year, which stood at 32.2%.

At the same time, the share of flat products in exports over the first five months of 2026 remained virtually unchanged compared with January–May 2025 — 47% versus 46.6% respectively, whereas the share of long products fell noticeably from 20.2% in 2025 to 11.8% in 2026.

The main markets for Ukrainian rolled steel remained the EU countries with a share of 78.6%, other European countries accounting for 11.7%, and the CIS countries with a share of 6.9%.

The key suppliers of steel products to Ukraine were other European countries, which took first place with a share of 47.8%, Asian countries in second place with 26.6%, and the EU-27 in third place, accounting for 16% of imports.

As reported by GMK Center, by the end of 2025, Ukraine had increased its consumption of metal products (rolled steel and semi-finished products) by 21.7% compared to 2024 — to 4 million tonnes. Last year, 1.6 million tonnes of steel products were imported into Ukraine, a 31.2% year-on-year increase. These imports accounted for 40.1% of the domestic consumption market, whilst the overall share of imports in domestic consumption of steel products rose by 2.49 percentage points year-on-year.